Donkey Kong

1982

The Game:In the rotund plumber Mario’s first adventure, you have to help him reach the top of a perilous scaffolding to rescue a damsel in distress from the dastardly Donkey Kong. (Coleco, 1982)

Memories: Remember how much of a train wreck Coleco made of Donkey Kong when they made that dismal version of it for the Atari 2600? Well, if anything, Coleco’s equally mind-numbing translation of Nintendo’s original smash hit for the Intellivision proves that Coleco was definitely trying to make their ColecoVision version of Donkey Kong look better.

Granted, the Intellivision disc controller doesn’t help some games on the best of days, and this is one of those games that it doesn’t help. But you know Mattel’s console could pull off better graphics than this. The big ape looks not even similar to a simian, but more like a rough sketch of Swamp Thing. (If anything, I think the VCS version actually looks and plays better – how’s that for adding insult to injury?)

Donkey Kong for the Intellivision, all controller issues aside, should have looked better and indeed could have looked better than this. For a real climb-and-jump game on this console, and one that happens to not look like a can of crap, see Beauty & The Beast.

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